HP books and the calendar art

[Simon Branford]

Simon said:"I only have the paperbacks, hardback GoF and the HP 
calendar (on March as I do not like the February picture). This is 
why I was considering buying the audio books now they are half price. 
I may get my obsessive rating up yet!"

Neil asked: "Oh dear.  What's wrong with Feb?"

It shows Hagrid, Harry and Griphook (?) in a Gringotts cart going to 
collect the stuff from the vaults. Frankly the picture looks scary 
and is not very good. March has Ron riding a broomstick (if the 
calendar is from PS then when does this happen?) and the picture is 
fairly close to my mental image of what Ron should look like. A 
mischievous grin and it has capture the fun loving Ron completely 
correctly. Also March has the same dates / days of the week link up 
as February so there is no problem with turning over early (also I 
don't use a calendar for date stuff anyway - it is for the pictures 
to decorate my room!).


Neil: "Oh yeah... I have the paperbacks of the first three and the 
hardback of GoF. So, I have to buy the first three only in 
hardback... then the paperback of GoF, when that comes out.  The 
deluxe hardback set looks nice too... hmmm.
 
I also have my eye on a full set of the books in German, as I'm 
picking up my German again.  WHSmiths has the first three, but it 
says they are US editions (???), and they are quite expensive, 
whereas Amazon.de has the original German publisher's versions and 
they seem a lot cheaper than these 'US' versions.  Isn't this 
bizarre?  Are they importing some sort of US-imported German versions 
of the books into the UK or are these the same books but ridiculously 
overpriced?"

The US flag means they are being imported from the US. Why they 
cannot manage to get them directly from Germany I do not know but 
would guess that these are the genuine German published editions of 
the books (I have not checked to see if this is the case - I am only 
guessing).

I think if I was going to get the German versions I would either do a 
deal with someone I knew in Germany to send each other editions that 
we wanted or to get them from Amazon.de. I am loathed to order US 
import books that are in fact from Germany. Seems like far too much 
travelling for my liking.


Now all I have to do is find out what BoL have done with the last of 
my order of books from them (not HP stuff). I got three out of the 
four books I ordered within two days of the order and the fourth made 
it to their warehouse at the same time as the others, but seems to be 
getting no further and I ordered it over two weeks ago. I sometimes 
get annoyed by online shops and this is one such occasion (one of the 
others being how long they took to get me Peg's second book and the 
complete inability to get hold of her second).


Better stop before I get into a major rant!


Simon